Making a Choice
by patricia51
Summary: Can you just decide who you really are? Or does someone have to find it out for you? Set after DOFP but a prequel to my story "Full Circle".)


Making a Choice by patricia51

(Can you just decide who you really are? Or does someone have to find it out for you? Set after DOFP but a prequel to my story "Full Circle".)

"Come home. Please."

That simple line repeats itself in her mind over and over again as she walks next to the lake. A cool gust of wind blows off the water and she shivers slightly. She pulls the overcoat tighter around her.

In spite of all her thoughts she can't help but grin. What would that young couple wandering hand in hand think if they knew that only the overcoat and her boots were real; that every other garment that occasionally could be glimpsed was nothing more than her own body changed for the moment?

The grin faded. What would they care? Or would they even notice? Staring in each other's eyes as they were there was nothing else in the world except the two of them. That was good. That was how it should be. But it didn't make her situation any less confusing.

She sat down on a bench, looking out across the water without seeing it, without seeing the ducks squabbling for the pieces of bread a group of children were throwing them, without seeing the children or their watching parents. Scenes flashed through her mind making her more confused instead of less. They jumped from memory to another, following no specific pattern.

Who was she? Was she Raven? Was she Mystique? At one time she thought they were the same person, that Mystique was only a really cool code name as a government agent. But now they seemed to be two completely different women.

"Come home. Please."

Charles' words. Her brother ever since that night when starving and alone she had broke into the kitchen of the mansion she had come upon that evening. That was a night fixed forever in her memory.

She had slipped in through an unlocked window, frantically searching for anything to calm her growling stomach. She had already stuffed a handful of crackers and a random piece of cheese in her mouth when she heard footsteps. A quick peek had shown the young boy who appeared to be about her own age approaching quietly holding a baseball bat. She had looked around quickly, spotting a picture on the wall of him and the woman she had seen through the window earlier when she cased the building who was his mother. She quickly changed form to pretend to be her.

It hadn't worked. How was she to know that the boy's mother would never have acted as she thought she would? Wasn't that the way mothers were supposed to act? And then his voice was in her head and she had stared at him in amazement and fear. She needed to get away. She changed back to her real form, figuring it would scare him. It always had before she reflected bitterly.

But instead of fear an expression of wonder and delight had spread over the young boy's face.

"I always knew I couldn't be the only one in the world. The only one who was different," he had said. "And here you are." He had thrust out his hand. "Charles Xavier."

"Raven," was all she had been able to say.

"You're hungry and alone. Take whatever you want. We've got lots of food. You don't have to steal. In fact, you never have to steal again."

It had been wonderful. How Charles had got around his parents she had never found out but finally she had a home. A warm home with lots to eat and a brother to adore. There had been school and summers together and even double dates before they had headed off to Oxford. As long as she kept up the prearranged public form they had agreed upon back in the beginning she fit into the regular world just fine. But more and more she had resented that she had to cover up her real appearance. And it had hurt when she was so strongly attracted to Hank who returned the attraction but only saw their natural forms as something to be eliminated.

It had been Eric who had encouraged her not to hide herself anymore; Eric who was attracted to her natural form; Eric whom she had chosen on that sandy beach over a wounded Charles.

"Mutant and proud," she had flung at Hank.

Of course Eric HAD tried to kill her. His words sprang out again. "We can't risk keeping her alive, now that we know what happens." He would have succeeded if Hank hadn't intervened. Did it matter that Eric's motive was to prevent her from being taken then or at any other time in the future and used to create the Sentinels? It hadn't worked. Indeed it was because he had shot her that her blood had been recovered from the square and analyzed. Charles wanted to get her away, especially when she lay helpless from Stryker's taser.

Stryker. That wouldn't have happened if Alex hadn't interfered in Vietnam. She would have finished him then. Wouldn't she? While she had not yet broken into Trask's secret files she already knew that he was responsible for the kidnapping and delivering mutants to Trask Industries. Did that merit death? She was on the verge of strangling him when the power blast had flung him out of her grip and across the room.

"Raven!" Alex had called.

"That's not my name," she had replied.

Was that the final turning point? Was that when she had abandoned being Raven as well as Mystique at the same time; when they had become two separate identities? She had been so mad that the actual thought of killing Stryker had not actually crossed her mind. And she had not killed the Vietnamese General, what was his name, Nhuan? She HAD been tempted though, the look of shock and fear on his face.

"What's the matter, baby? Don't you think I look prettier like this?" she had taunted him. But even then she had only rendered him unconscious, tied him and gagged him and rolled him into the closet in his hotel suite.

Of course she had Trask on her mind. Bolivar Trask. He was going to die. Human versus mutant didn't even figure into it. He wasn't human he was a monster. He deserved it.

A vagrant thought crossed her mind. It was something out of a book that Charles had read to her at night when they were at Oxford. She remembered only bits and pieces of it as she usually fell asleep during the reading. But that one stuck in her mind.

"Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them?"

Regardless, she had been set on death for Trask. Not only for vengeance but to prevent the creation of the Sentinels. Sentinels that the US Government had refused. She had been heartened by that. Who was it she had seen? Some Senator? Brickhouse? No that was the baseball announcer. Brickman, that was it, talking to Trask, shooting his proposal down.

"We can't support a weapon that targets our own citizens. If these Mutants as you describe are living here, they are living here peacefully!"

But then she had learned of his proposal to pass the technology on to the Chinese, the Russians, and the other Communists. So she had tried to intervene, to kill him then. And what a fiasco that had been. Trask alive, herself tasered and then wounded, the whole intervention of Charles and Erik and Hank and that Logan guy from the future gone awry. Awry? It had run amuck.

She had cornered Erik who had told her it was too late, that Trask already had her blood, the blood that would allow the Sentinels to mutate to meet any attack. He told her of the future that Logan a time traveling mutant had revealed to them. He had NOT told her about his plan to infiltrate the Sentinels with steel, allowing him to control them. Then came the meeting with Hank and that guy Logan and what she had been told by them. And believed.

"So Erik was telling the truth. You're really from the future," she had said.

Hank had pleaded with her. "If you kill Trask, there'll be ten more like him."

"Well then I'll kill them too, and anyone who comes next!" she had replied defiantly.

Logan had snorted. "Let's just cut to the chase here, all right? You want to know how all this ends? Because I've seen you in the future!"

"Yeah? What am I like?"

He had looked her right in the face and let her have it. "You're a cold murderous bitch!"

"Whoa!" Hank had exclaimed.

Although she had been rocked back on her heels by that statement she wasn't giving up with out a fight. "Well, don't hold back!" she had replied as sarcastically as she possibly could.

It hadn't slowed Logan down. "By the time they finish you - and they finish you - you've killed so much you're knee-deep in human AND mutant blood. You don't even know who you are!"

She had fled from Logan's accusing face and even worse, Hank's horrified one. She had regained her determination though and brushed through Charles's telepathic attempt to talk to her in the airport on her way to the States and Washington. She had thrust it into the back of her mind, refusing to acknowledge that Logan might know what he was talking about. Looking back it made sense. She DIDN'T know who she was and apparently it didn't get any better in the future.

Still, she had made her attempt on Trask only to be frozen by Charles until Eric's attack had broken his concentration. Hers as well. She had enough presence of mind to join in the rush to the safe room, which turned out to be anything but safe for the crowd that had jammed into it. Her either when Trask's damn mutant detector had gone off and there had been the attempt to seize her, with Trask yelling something that once again showed what he thought of her kind.

"I need it alive."

IT. Not her, not him. Bastard. She WAS right about him.

Then the room strained, groaned and before anyone could realize what was going on it was pulled out of the ground, out of the White House and the side was ripped off to show Eric. No, not Eric but Magneto in all his raging power. He even scared her.

Although she agreed with some of his speech, particularly the part about having to hide in the shadows she froze when he indicated he was going to start by wiping out the entire party there. Logan's words ran through her mind again.

"You're knee-deep in human AND mutant blood."

Trask was evil and Stryker wasn't much better but many of those in the now open room didn't deserve what Magneto was planning. Besides, there was a very good chance that she couldn't escape herself and a little enlightened self-preservation seemed damn well justified. She left Trask on the back burner and moved to confront someone who had gone from one of the men she admired most in the world, for whom she had parted from her brother and her friends, to someone who had tried his best to kill her and probably would again. Knowing she had to delay his reaction she had assumed the guise of the President.

It had worked, although she wouldn't have bet a dime on his looking away had it not been for the surprising attack of the Sentinel. While it was no more successful than had been Logan and Hank's try, he had turned away from her and she had acted, firing a shot that had taken him down.

Even now that was a nagging question. Had she brought a plastic gun solely for the purpose of getting it past the metal detectors? Or had there been somewhere in the back of her mind the thought that she might need it for Magneto? All the guns hanging in the air when she confronted him seemed to say she had made a wise choice either way.

She was glad she hadn't killed him, that he had turned his head at the last second and only been wounded. But she certainly had not pulled her punches, or kick, when she laid him out. Then it was time to turn on Trask in her true form. That was when Charles had stepped in the last time she had seen him.

"Get out of my mind," she had demanded. She had expected him to try to hold her mentally, as he had just before the gathering had exploded. Instead he had only talked to her.

"I've been trying to control you since the day we met, and look where that's got us. Everything that happens now is in your hands. I have faith in you, Raven."

"Raven," she repeated aloud sitting on the bench. "Raven."

Had that been the deciding factor? Was it's Charles s persuasion rather than attempting to force her that turned the tide or had it simply been her name that swayed her, reminded her of who she had been? Perhaps it was both. Her brother could be very convincing. She had dropped the gun and walked away, pausing only to insure Magneto s helmet had been out of his reach. She had seen him leave but by then she didn't care. She had disappeared.

Well, almost. Her lips curled up in a grin. In her assumed form of a soldier she had overheard a radioed attempt to locate Major Stryker to inform him of the finding of the mutant at the bottom of the Potomac. Unable to resist she had taken Stryker's form and responded, which of course had also meant any efforts to reach the real Stryker would be stopped. Getting Logan away from the grip of the government had been the best pure FUN she had had in ages. She and Logan had talked and then gone their separate ways once they were safely away.

She sat up. Logan not Wolverine. Charles not Professor X. Alex not Havoc. And most important Hank not Beast. That was how she had been thinking of them, remembering them even as Eric had faded away to become only Magneto.

What was in a name? Would indeed 'that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet"? Did she have a choice?

She did. She decided. Mystique would always be a part of her. But her name was Raven.

And it was time to go home.

(The End)

(Notes: "Well, don't hold back!" appeared in one of the early trailers but the scene it appeared in where Raven, Hank and Logan talk was deleted. But I put it back in because I loved the line and Jennifer's delivery of it. And "that which we call a rose, etc" is from "Romeo and Juliet" Act II, Scene II.)


End file.
